Pressure Point #1 Unreached Peoples 6

Our Priority?

While missiologist Ralph Winter was not the first to acknowledge that ta ethne (“nations”) of Matthew 28:19 was to be interpreted as ethno-linguistic groups and not political nation-states, his presentation at the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization inspired and moved a multitude of evangelicals from across the globe to rethink what is necessary to make disciples of all nations.  Winter, in his presentation titled, “The Highest Priority: Cross-Cultural Evangelism,” emphasized that there were thousands of hidden peoples in the world and, apart from cross-cultural missionary activity, they would never have a chance to hear and respond to the gospel. Seven years after his movement-making address in Lausanne, Switzerland, Winter wrote, “These peoples are being called the ‘Hidden Peoples’ [i.e., unreached peoples] and are defined by ethnic or sociological traits to be people so different from the cultural traditions of any existing church that missions (rather than evangelism) strategies are necessary for the planting of indigenous churches within their particular traditions.”  During the 1980s men such as Ed Dayton, C. Peter Wagner, and Luis Bush (among others) began to advocate a strategic priority on the “10/40 Window,” an imaginary perimeter on the globe where the majority of the world’s unreached peoples live.

We live in a world where over two billion people have never heard the gospel. Even with the hundreds of thousands of missionaries serving in the world today and decades of discussions related to unreached people groups, it is estimated that only 10 percent of the evangelical missionary force is doing pioneer mission work among unreached people groups. That means that nine times as many missionaries are serving among the reached people groups as among the unreached. To help put things in a different perspective, only about 14 percent of Buddhists, 14 percent of Hindus, 13 percent of Muslims, and 19 percent of all of those who are non-Christian know a Christian. It has also been estimated that 82 percent of Christian monies collected goes to home pastoral ministries, mainly in Europe and the Americas. Twelve percent goes to domestic missions. Less than 6 percent is spent on missions outside of these heavily Christianized regions. But only 0.1 percent goes toward the unevangelized world!

Our Ignorance

In light of 40 years of discussions and strategies for unreached people groups, we are just now waking up to the fact that many of the world’s unreached peoples are living in the West in general, and in North America in particular.  It is a sad testimony to our missiology that we have better information on an unreached people group living on the backside of the Himalayas than we do of that same people group living in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.  Nashville is now home to Little Kurdistan. Saudi Arabian students are now the fourth largest number of international students in the United States (behind China, India, and South Korea). Many peoples from the historic “10/40 window” are now flooding customs in Toronto, Chicago, and New York.  Over 100 representatives of unengaged-unreached people groups can be found in the United States. Once we consider those groups of 100,000 or more in population, their representatives in the United States increase to nearly 400.

Ignorance of the unreached is not an option for Kingdom Citizens.

Cross-Cultural Disciple Making Still the Need of the Hour

The greatest need today is still for cross-cultural disciple making that results in churches planted.  This is true for labors outside of North America and within North America.